Over the Summit, Fri, 8/7/20

The 7,000+ ft Donner Summit in the Sierra Nevada Mtns can get 35-40 ft of snow a year and sometimes 40-60 ft. Snow drifts can be dozens of feet high. And then there are avalanches! When the transcontinental railroad was finished in 1869, it traversed these mountains. Snow sheds were built to protect the track (people and freight), first of wood (fire hazard), later of concrete. Still later, this track was abandoned; the trains moved along a track further south.  But the sheds remain.  Jimmy and I have walked inside these sheds a couple of times, but not all the way.  We've even brought friends and relatives to see/walk the sheds.  But, curious citizens as we are, Jimmy and I have wondered just how far the snow sheds run, as in how many miles?  Today we'd find out the answer.  Inquiring minds want to know ....

This is close to where we finished up, overlooking beautiful Donner Lake.  You see motor boats zipping through the blue water.  Donner Summit is to your left out of the photo.

But this is where we began, at the western end.  Rather than one very long snow shed, these are broken into sections.  The one above serves as an overpass for a local road.

Graffiti?  Yes, everywhere.  Some artistic, others just a "Kilroy was here" type.  We've decided that ladders must be hidden somewhere so the doodlers don't have to 'em lug up and down the mountain every time.  They paint high.  Two of the tunnels (snow sheds) were wet down the center as above, but the sides were dry, so our feet remained dry.

Light at the end of the tunnel?

If you're willing to do a bit of boulder-hopping, you can explore further.  Behind Jimmy is one of the sheds, but we were looking for a different trail along the willows, which we found and which led only to the next shed.  Oh well.

Free entertainment along the way, too.

Watching rock climbers always makes me catch my breath.

The trail by the willows was ablaze in summer flowers.

You see people atop the cliff next to red x in above photo?  We've stood there ourselves on past hikes looking down at the China Wall where we were standing today (below).  Makes for a nice, fairly lengthy loop hike.  More folks are hiking up the rocks bottom center.  The road is Historic Hwy 40, leading to Rainbow Bridge.

This might be the longest shed:  Tunnel 6, which ran 1,659 ft through the summit ridge at Donner Pass.  Truly, it seems to go on forever!  Jimmy stands at the China Wall base and the tunnel entrance.

Plenty of natural light in this section.  You see what I mean about a ladder?

Out the other side now, and gazing toward from whence we came.  The straight dark line is the long snow shed.

Butterflies (including attractive Lorquin's Admiral) on Western Hemlock.

The sheds were built into the mountainsides where possible.

Some are cathedral-like in their interior "design" and hushed atmosphere.  All are cool/ish.  Today we encountered throngs of visitors at the beginning.  The snow sheds had been advertised in the Sac Bee newspaper as a swell day trip with/for the kids, and, Holy Moly, they came in droves!  This was our first experience with COVID crowds.  Some wore masks (we wore ours when near anyone); many chose not to wear any.  As we suspected, when the tunnels and darkness wore on, folks got tired and bored with it and turned around, so we were left with relative peace and quiet, like above.  I used a flash on this pic.

Aha!  We got to the end.  No more snow shed, just a wall.  This was it.  Roughly two-and-a-half miles of tunnels one way.  That being said, initially many more miles of sheds were built, but all have been dismantled.  We had to go back the same way, which made it a five-miler.  Now we know.

I took a few photos on the way back (yes, we were walking on railroad rocks the entire time, hard on the feet).  This walk in these tunnels was really interesting, not for the graffiti, but for the history.

This entrance was kinda creepy, but the tunnel sides and roof changed as we went along, when the engineers switched to cement slabs instead of native rock.  Good thing the area isn't earthquake-prone.

Aiming for the tunnel entrance at the end of the gravel path.

Layer upon layer of paint.  In some places, we could smell the paint spray, so our masks came in handy!  First time we've ever smelled fresh paint.

The best one, in our opinions.

Here I've stepped out of a tunnel to look around, and I spied the previous tunnel entrance (red x).  Large openings were spaced every now and again in the tunnels (which made me feel better, I can tell you), probably to evacuate people if needed.  So ... that was our day.  Fun for us.  What'll we do next week?